Since his resignation from the Foreign Affairs Minister post that he held nearly three years ago, John Dalli may have lost his place in the Cabinet, but what he writes in newspapers and says in public still creates high waves, on both sides of the political fence.
Last Sunday, Mr Dalli was interviewed by l-orizzont editor Frans Ghirxi at the MLP centre in Zebbug.
Such events should become more frequent in Malta – politicians should submit to be questioned by others from the opposite political side. As it is, having a leading exponent of a political party – because, in spite of the fact that he is no longer a minister, John Dalli is still a politician who carries weight – being interviewed by an editor of a newspaper that is diametrically on the other side of the political spectrum is a rare occasion.
To have such an interview being carried out in a Malta Labour Party club, and being attended by senior representatives of both major parties, is perhaps unique. The local political scenario needs more such activities because they move away from the stereotyped interviews that have journalists asking soft questions to politicians from the party that owns, or has an influence, ideological or whatever, the media that employs the same journalists.
There have been some occasions in the past when politicians have had to face journalists from the critical media, or from the independent media, but there have been too few of them. The fact that they are a rarity generates more interest in them, largely because it is known that the questions that will be put will be as searching as possible, and will not lead to the same answers we keep hearing over and over again, which are lamely accepted by journalists who usually are on the politician’s side of the fence.
To go back to Sunday’s interview, Mr Dalli was clear in his thoughts about the party he still belongs to and with which he will once again contest the coming general election. He admitted that the toughest part of the whole issue was to deal with attacks coming from within his own party, as those were the ones that hurt him most.
Yet Mr Dalli, who can take pride in the legacy of what he achieved in his ministerial terms, believes that he can still offer a valid contribution to the party, as otherwise he would not have decided to stay on and face the electorate again.
One important factor that emerged from Mr Dalli’s interview is the strong message that he sent to his party with regard to the need for the PN to reunify its supporters and “bring them closer to the party”.
The recent electoral defeats at local council level – the PN has lost the last four rounds of elections – are, according to Mr Dalli, a clear indication that Nationalist supporters are feeling cut off from the party and need to be brought back to the fold. On the other hand, Mr Dalli believes that the Labour Party has failed to take advantage of this situation because traditional PN voters were not shifting to Labour, but were simply not turning up to vote. The big question, as Mr Dalli put it, is whether the non-voters will vote at the next election.
What Mr Dalli was telling his party is that to have a chance to win the general election, it must be better organised to be able to encourage those voters who might be undecided as to whether or not they would exercise their right to vote. It can be interpreted to mean that if all PN voters turn out to vote for their party, the PN will win again – and that the MLP can only win by default, that is, if many Nationalists opt to stay at home on election day.
Mr Dalli may be right in his interpretation, and he may be wrong. But in a way, he was criticising the party’s administrative machine and saying it was not doing enough, a message that surely did not go unnoticed by PN secretary-general Joe Saliba, who was present among the audience.